Michael Black was born in 1962, and grew up in south Manchester. He was educated at York University, where he completed a degree in European Literature and History, and then at Cambridge University, where he completed a doctorate in South African anti-apartheid literature.

During the 1980s he worked as a journalist and features writer on newspapers and magazines such as Today, The Mail On Sunday and The Illustrated London News, but most of his work has been as a stage playwright. His plays have been performed in London, Cardiff, Manchester, York and Edinburgh at home, and in Timisoara, Iasi and Bucharest abroad. They include The Life To Come (Edinburgh 1984, Cardiff 1985), Pure Walking Evil (London 1989, National Theatre of Romania 1990/91, Edinburgh Festival 2004) and The Amber Room (London, 1998).

He has been awarded three Arts Council Theatre Writing Bursaries, of which Madame Polina represents the last play to be finished.

The second, dating back to 1992, for the play Panharmonicon, he completed in 1997, and an option on the script was taken up by the commercial producers P.W. Productions. Moves are afoot to produce the play simultaneously at various European theatres.

Pure Walking Evil had a rehearsed reading in New York at the Genesius Guild, May 2002. Madame Polina had a reading by the same company in 2003.

The Minotaur, about Picasso's relationship with his three mistresses, set in Paris in 1945/6, immediately after the liberation from the Nazis, is Michael's most recently completed play, completed in 2007.

After several years in website design and information management, Michael has subsequently moved from writing stage plays to writing film scripts, the first of which, Redgauntlet, he completed in 2008. He currently has several other film scripts in mind, for details of which go to Film Scripts and Treatments.

Michael's autobiographical book Angels, Cleopatra And Psychosis was published in 2009 by Chipmunkapublishing and is supported by Arts Council England. The sequel, Leonardo, Romancia And Ra, is forthcoming in 2010.